“Is That About Me?” – When Literature Becomes Personal

What is personal about a book, beyond all the topics it deals with and all its clearly recognizable concerns? How is my life experience connected with my reading experience? And in what form do those who write books also appear personally in them? “This book is my most personal,” is probably always the case, because without the person who wrote it, the book would not exist. It doesn’t matter whether the author tells her “own” story or not: in any case, ‘I’ wrote the book and ‘I’ read it. My most personal book may be the one in which I don’t talk about myself, my most personal reading the moment when I forget myself. So why is it that I take a book personally? What is it about it that triggers something in me, something in you?

Hannes Becker and Henning Bochert approach these questions in reading from their new texts Lidokork and Die weißen Hände, and discussing them.

Please find all information on the website of the Grüner Salon.

25 Jan 2026 | 6 pm
Grüner Salon | Volksbühne Berlin
Admission: 9€/6€
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Hannes Becker writes plays, radio plays, prose and poetry. He translates plays and poetry from English into German, e. g. by Pamela Carter, Caryl Churchill, Jerry Lieblich, Matthew López, Charles Reznikoff, and Rosmarie Waldrop. Together with Marlene-Sophie Haagen, he co-hosts the podcast ZEMENT GIESSEN.

Henning Bochert works as writer, dramaturge, literary tranlator and lecturer in Berlin. His plays have been shown at theatres in Berlin, Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main. His prose has been published in various literary magazines. He translated Eve Leigh, Dawn King, George Brant, Rhea Leman, Adam Rapp and others into German and Özlem Dündar, Christoph Hein, Martin Heckmanns into English.